I think the technical term is a "Glitch", or at least that is how I understand it.

I am pleased to hear that your system now works but I can only think that in processors of the 8080 type, (2086 computer technology and before), they require an anti loop system taking the "failed" run back to the start. A bit like a "Soft reboot" and I don't think it is used any more. I am probably wrong but like to think I am right. I hope I am wrong because if I am, the software manufacturers have forgotten how to write programmes with recovery built in to them.

Try installing Firefox browser on the machine. Open the website up using this browser instead of Internet Explorer. You will be able to view your PDF's with the current Reader version installed on your computer. When installing Firefox make sure to uncheck the default setting option, this way Internet Explorer will remain your primary choice. I have included a link to a site that will enable you to download the program.

I've solved the problem, at least, for me. PDF's opening in my browsers (Chrome and IE8 with Windows 7 64 bit) were all working fine until recently, and I don't know what changed it.

I found that after I exited that message in a box which said that the adobe reader running couldn't open pdf's in browsers and that I needed version 8 or 9, adobe reader 4.0 popped up with a blank grey window. It was installed on my pc for some reason so I just uninstalled it. I also uninstalled adobe reader 9, deleted the exe and started over. Downloaded a fresh copy of 9.3.3 and it's all fine now.

I may not have needed to uninstall version 4.0, nor necessarily needed to redownload adobe 9.

I may have had success just uninstalling 9 and reinstalling it from the exe I already had.

But it takes no time at all to delete everything, redownload and reinstall. Do any of that and you should be good to go again.

The issue above, and below has a wider scope then what I am presenting, and although it relates to Microsoft Windows Registry it's not that difficult, and lets face it Adobe Reader functionality is broke anyway... The thing to keep in mind here is the litmus test: You create a new user on your PC, and try the failing feature via your web browser (Internet Explorer 8, in this case, but not limited to...) and the new account is able to open the PDF file inside the browser window. So if your answer is yes it does work, then your on the right path. Also note that if you have multiple users on the PC, and only one is having the issue, you may choose to use one of the other good working accounts to copy the Registry keys from.

When setting up a new pc for an existing user, and using the existing user profile you may need to delete the Registry key HKeyCurrentUser-Software-Adobe for the current user on the new PC, and copy this back in from a local user account on the new PC.

Caveat; this most likely to occur because of additional updates, and versions of Adobe that were installed on the old pc, that are not on the new clean PC. The original existing user Profile contains registry key entries pointing to software that is not on the new pc.

Note: Always backup/export a registry key before you delete it.

To Backup the Registry key First Open the Windows Registry Editor via Start/Run "regedit" Then navigate to the key (HKeyCurrentUser-Software-Adobe) Right Click on it, and choose Export, give it a filename I usually use something similar to the original, with origin addendum like HKCU-Jim-SW-Adobe.

Now Log out of the bad user account, and Log in to the Good user account.

Repeat the Export Process, naming the file...HKCU-Good-SW-Adobe

Once you have Exported the Registry Keys from Both Accounts...

Log out of the Good Account, Log in to the Bad user account

To import, you can use Windows Explorer, find where you Exported the good key to,

(making sure you are now Logged in with the afflicted Account)

Double Click on the good key, and tell it yes you want to add the information, and OK.

Now because it is a dynamic registry key, you need to log out, and back in one last time for this to take affect. This is with the (so called) bad account (now fixed!!!).

I spent hours searching and didn’t find this on the internet, and everything I did find was the standard Un-install, all previous versions… Un-install, re-install the most recent version, set your preferences in Adobe for Open PDF in Brower.

As a matter of fact we have cases where we have to run older ver of AR and that same process resolves our doc gen issues in our in house apps. If we have to maintain AR8 then we delete the 7.0, 9.0 and 6.0 (we have images that go waaaay back) keys.

To date I am not aware of any tech that has had to generate the bBrowserIntegration key.

PLEASE NOTE: If you are trying to open PDF files in a browser window on Windows 7 x64, then you mustuse a 32-bit browser! If you use the 64-bit version of Internet Explorer, then the PDF file will always open in a separate Adobe Reader window.

We are having serious issues with Adobe Reader 9.3 where very few users can view PDF files within IE8 (Windows 7 or XP SP3). I've read all these posts and none of these fixes do help quite saldly. After 3 weeks of researching, I am ready to jump out the window!

We actually need for these PDF to be viewed within IE and not via Adobe Reader.

I had the same issue. I closed Acrobat 9 Pro and opened just the reader. I wend to Edit > Preferences > Internet and turned off "Display PDF in browser" and now it works. I'm using latest IE Explorer and when the PDF opened, I look at what version Reader it was and it is 9.4.0. I hope this works for everyone who was as frustrated as I was.

I would not call tech support on this matter because they will tell you that you have to buy a contract before they will help you. i just went throug that when i called just a few minutes ago on an update that is always failing.

I installed Adobe Reader 9 on my MAC OS X 10.4.11 because I got a screen prompt saying a .pdf opening in the browser was different? or newer? or something and it might not display well. Had trouble getting the darn install to work, but then it was successfully installed. Aha. Not a single .pdf would open in the browser, even the ones I had just been looking at using Adobe Reader 8. Read a little of this thread and saw it is apparently a very common problem, amazingly enough. (Why urge users to download newer version that doesn't work, won't display .pdfs in a browser??)

Fortunately, I hadn't emptied the trash of the old Adobe Reader 8 yet.

And, as others have noted, there is no uninstall app for AR 9, even though instructions say there is supposed to be. Went online to adobe and did search for uninstall for AR 9, hoping there would be one i could download. Nope. So I set about uninstalling on my own, just trashing the AR 9 folder and app, but not all of it will empty in trash. I did hard drive search of all things with "adobe" and trashed them. But I still got messages saying a localized.rcsc (something like that) and an Adobe Air something can't be trashed because they're in use. At this point, the pdfs still won't display.

So used the MAC "secure trash" which forces the trash to empty even when something is in use. Put Adobe Reader 8 back in the apps folder and voila, I have a working browser that will show pdfs again! Only took about 3 hours!

I hope this is helpful to someone else who has discovered the nightmare of Adobe Reader 9.

I couldn't fix the problem in Explorer 9 so i installed Google Chrome........now if i want to just browse i find Explorer the best but when i get to a site that requires Adobe i need to cut and past the page into Chrome.

Somebody ought to shut the whole thread down and post the Reader 10 message to that effect, Tony. Some of us have not used Adobe Acrobat Reader for some time. Why not the suggestion, since we get so many messages regarding automatic, or almost, updates . . . why not automatically update everyone with Reader X. That would have saved at least half the 247,000 people that viewed the discussion boards about this issue. Come on Adobe. It's really amazing to me that this problem has been on the discussion boards since 2008. That's a long time to tick your customer base off. And another curiosity, I wonder why I have not noticed the problem until recently?